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Colleague's emotional on-air tribute to Dianne Oxberry after broadcaster's death

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Her colleague Simon King said her death had 'hit us like a ton of bricks'.

Dianne Oxberry’s weather presenter colleague paid an emotional tribute to the broadcaster live on air.

Simon King told Radio 5 Live how the death of the North West Tonight meteorologist, aged 51 after suffering from cancer, had come as a shock.

I've just been listening back to a show Di and I did for @BBCRadioManc last year playing our favourite songs. It has put a smile on my face after what has been a rather awful morning. She just did that, so warm and lovely. Fabulous taste in music too!#DianneOxberrypic.twitter.com/beKqz6DEfw

“It’s devastating, absolutely devastating. It’s been such a quick process, this whole thing,” he told the station’s breakfast show.

“It’s hit us like a ton of bricks, it really has. ”

Presenter Rachel Burden asked him: “Are you OK to do the weather?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice breaking, before saying: “So, excuse me,” and going on to regain his composure and present the forecast.

Co-host Nicky Campbell told him afterwards: “You did her proud Si.”

Burden said she got to know Oxberry in the last couple of years “as part of the BBC Women’s Network and she was an incredible support and a great champion for her female colleagues here at the BBC”.

“I can’t tell you the impact she made in talking to other people and supporting them in their own personal journeys,” she said.

“She was a really loyal and very generous colleague to people here.”

Campbell described Oxberry as a “wonderful person, sweet and warm woman”.

It has been devastating news about Dianne. The suddeness of it has hit us like a tonnes of bricks. She was such a kind, wonderful person and will be sorely missed. Thoughts to her family x pic.twitter.com/bLf9r4uN4b